Sunday, February 13, 2011

I urge SurvivalBlog readers to be vigilant. If you see or hear of incidents of "pre-crime" policing going on in your community, then speak up about it quickly and vociferously. Cell phones equipped with built-in video cameras are now ubiquitous, so film everything if you witness a questionable encounter with law enforcement, or have one of your own. Offer to help with the legal defense of those that are wrongly accused. Write letter to the editor of your local newspaper. If the "pre-crime" policing trend is allowed to continue, we can kiss the Fourth Amendment goodbye. We must be just as steadfast about the Fourth Amendment as we are about the First and Second Amendments!

I also urge law enforcement officers to show restraint when in doubt about the innocence of a suspect. You never know when you are going to push a wronged person the wrong way. You might end facing a Brian Christine, or a Gordon Kahl, or a Joe Stack, or a Carl Drega. Whether they are right or they just feel that they're right, sometimes people are willing to stand up and fight to the death if they believe they've been wronged.

Alison Ruoff, a long-standing member of the Church’s ‘parliament’, the General Synod, said: ‘The Church is only just waking up to this. We have been pathetic and mealy-mouthed but we should be really concerned about this.

Col. Walter Joseph Marm, right, listens to Lt. Gen. Thomas Griffin at Wayne Community College during a special event to honor Marm for his heroic action during the Vietnam War -- for which he received the Medal of Honor.

The story was one most in the crowd had heard before -- immortalized in print and on film.

In many ways it was a story similar to that which can be told by every Medal of Honor recipient. But this time, the audience got to hear Joe Marm tell it himself. On stage in Moffatt Auditorium for Wayne Community College's Medal of Honor Gala with retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Tom Griffin, Marm, a retired U.S. Army Col. Walter Joseph Marm, right, listens to Lt. Gen. Thomas Griffin at Wayne Community College during a colonel, discussed the special event to honor Marm for his heroic action during the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley inthe Vietnam War -- for which he received the Medal of the action that led to his Honor, receiving the Medal of Honor, and his life since.

It was, Griffin said, "just two old soldiers talking." Afterward Marm was honored by Dr. Kay Albertson, president of Wayne Community College, with the announcement that a new endowment is being established in his name to provide scholarships for military family members. "It's just perfect. We felt with us being a military town, and Joe being our local hero, that establishing this endowment in his name would be a great way to honor him," she said, speaking after the evening's festivities. And, she explained, the decision to have the funds go toward scholarships for military family members was actually his family's. Deborah Marm, Marm's wife of 24 years, explained that because of their experiences through his 40 years of service, they know how hard it can be for military family members to continue their education, and so when this opportunity to help presented itself, they jumped on board.

"This is such an honor and education is so important. We just wanted to give back any way we could," said Mrs. Marm, a native of Fremont. But establishing the endowment was only a small part of the evening. The rest of it was spent honoring Marm for his acts of valor and heroism in 1965 in the first major battle of Vietnam for U.S. soldiers. reserved. In a story told at length in the book and movie "We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young" Marm, part of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, arrived in Vietnam in September 1965 with the rest of the 1st Cavalry Division, ready to introduce a new way of fighting to the battlefield -- air cavalry, where, as he put it, "(the helicopters) were our Jeeps."

And the first time those new battlefield tactics were used was in November of that year during the Battle of Ia Drang Valley in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam when approximately 450 Americans fought nearly four times that many North Vietnamese Army soldiers. But on the first day -- the day Marm earned his Medal of Honor -- only about 250 Americans were on the ground when they were ambushed. "They walked into a buzz saw," Griffin said. "This was a desperate situation. More than one man wondered if Little Big Horn was going to be repeated."

But ultimately, he said, it was the actions of men like Marm that carried the day. "Personal courage is a major thing," Griffin said. "But being able to lead young men in the face of extreme danger is a rare gift. Joe was that kind of leader."

Marm received the medal in 1966 after leading his platoon through enemy fire in an attempt to rescue a unit of Americans surrounded byNorth Vietnamese. According to his citation, Marm not only killed four enemy soldiers who were threatening his platoon, he then deliberately exposed himself to fire from a concealed machine gun and attempted to destroy it with an antitank weapon. And while that didn't stop the gun, he said, it did make a lot a noise and kick up a lot of dust. "It really picked up my morale," Marm said. "And I'm sure it picked up the morale of my soldiers."

But, the citation goes on to read, he then charged position, despite being wounded, hurling grenades and finally killing the last of the eight soldiers manning the gun with his rifle. It was then that he was shot in the jaw and later evacuated shortly before dark that first day.

On Thursday, after his citation was read, a brief video of footage from the battle in Vietnam and a television re-enactment of the event was shown, as well as footage from his Medal of Honor ceremony in Washington, D.C., which Marm had just recently had converted off the 16 mm roll of film onto a DVD.

It was the first time the videos had been shown in an event such as this, and after the ceremony, Marm remembered the day he got a call, asking him to explain to the television actor what he had done. Marm laughed, and said that the actor, though he didn't shoot the antitank weapon before charging the machine gun nest, had gotten it right even taking the correct course to the termite mound the gun was behind. But during and even after the ceremony, Marm was quick to turn the attention away from himself and put it back on the men he served with, especially at Ia Drang. "It was just a great bunch of soldiers," he said.

"I wear the Medal of Honor for all the men who served with me.

It's as much their medal as it is mine. I'm just the caretaker of that medal."All he would say about receiving the medal was that it had put him in a special, tight-knit group of people -- only 85 recipients are living today - - and that he's always been aware of the fact people pay closer attention to his actions because of its presence. "It's harder to wear the medal than it is to earn it. I've tried to set the example for my family and the soldiers I've worked and lived with," he said. But while he downplayed the fact that he is a hero, many Thursdaypaused to speak to him during the reception that followed the ceremony, to shake his hand, ask for his autograph and thank him for his service. "It really touched me," said Deleterious Sykes, an eight-year Marine Force Recon veteran. "I'm definitely proud to be here. This is wonderful."

Also participating in the ceremony Thursday were Vietnam veteran, author and scholar Dr. Bob Sorley, who gave a history on the Medal of Honor, and the 82nd Airborne Division All-American Chorus, which performed a medley of rock-and-roll and armed forces tunes.

There were many in the North who understood what fueled the rise of the Ku Klux in the postwar South. “The Nation” magazine commented on Klan activity in South Carolina in 1870 with: “this is all horrible, but we have no hesitation in saying that it is not an unnatural consequence of the caricature on government which has been kept up in that State for the last 4 years.” Very simply, had the abolitionists who brought war to the country in 1861 put their fanatical energies into peaceful and practical solutions to African slavery, no Klan would have emerged to protect white Southerners amid the ruin and devastation.

“While there is little doubt that [General John B. Gordon] became involved with the Ku Klux Klan – he was often referred to as the Grand Dragon of the Klan in Georgia – it is virtually impossible to penetrate the shroud of secrecy surrounding his association with it. Most of what is known about his role in the organization is contained in his testimony before a joint select congressional committee in July, 1871.

When asked directly what he knew of illegal organizations known as the Ku Klux, Gordon denied all knowledge of any combination by that name, except what he had read in papers or heard secondhand. He did, however, reveal his association with a secret organization whose sole purpose, he maintained, was the preservation of peace. Gordon stated that when approached by some of Georgia’s most respected men, he joined this “brotherhood of property-holders, the peaceable, law-abiding citizens of the State, for self-protection” from the threat posed by the black population that he thought was largely ignorant.

Although he asserted that he had personally “never entertained toward the Negro race anything but the very kindliest feelings,” Gordon again explained that it was the influx of “carpet-baggers” and their seditious influence upon the blacks that forced whites in the South to act. The introduction of this “class of men whose object seemed to be to stir up strife among the people, and to create animosity,” in his opinion, disrupted the normally harmonious relations between the races.

Organizing blacks into Union or Loyal Leagues, these unprincipled whites attempted to convince the former slaves that their interests “were in direct conflict with those of the white men of the South.” Gordon also blamed these “carpet-baggers” for reinforcing the commonly held notion that all of the lands in the South really belonged to the freedmen, and not to the whites.

Fearful that such incendiary preachings might well incite blacks to violence, native white Southerners had little choice but to act on their own, Gordon contended. Thus they formed what he called a “peace police organization” to protect themselves, their families, and their property from outrage. “We would have preferred death,” he asserted, “rather than to have submitted to what we supposed was coming upon us.”

Even though Gordon styled his association “purely a peace police – “a law-abiding concern” – he explained that native whites felt compelled to remain in the shadows because any attempt at public organization would be construed by the Federal authorities as a move antagonistic to the government. Gordon even asserted that his organization would gladly have united with Federal troops to quell racial disorders, but, as he pointed out, “we apprehended that the sympathy of the entire Government would be against us. “We did not want to have in our State a war of the races – to have property and our lives destroyed. We feared the peril to our women and children.”

"Permit me respectfully to disagree about the potency of American intelligence agencies. It seems to me that they are clowns, incompetent at their assigned work but adept at causing grave problems for the United States. Their almost comic ineptitude lies hidden behind a veil of romantic secrecy a la James Bond. But look at their known record."

SAN DIEGO -- A taxi cab driver plowed slowly into a crowd on a sidewalk in San Diego's busy Gaslamp District early Saturday, injuring more than two dozen people, police said.We cannot have automobiles doing this sort of damage. 25 people were injured, 17 of them requiring hospitalization, and one woman had her leg severed.

"We know that States under fierce moralist codes are indistinguishable from Communist tyrannies in practise. The fundamentalist Muslim world is an example here; stifled economies, mass poverty, no personal freedom, no human rights, arbitrary policing by a mutaween who play the role of a moral Stazi. And I will say this; if I were a Communist, or a Fascist, or somebody seeking a totalitarian end, and my movement’s previous attempts had collapsed in ignominy, I would look at Iran, for instance, and be inspired."

"Nazism in the Middle East started when the German Nazi Party founded an Egyptian section of the NSDAP/AO (the international Nazi organization). They distributed anti-Semitic literature and attempted to set up an Arabic press service. Initially these initiatives met with little success. The Nazis’ first effective step was to have the German textile industry threaten to boycott Egyptian cotton. The Egyptian government bowed to the Third Reich’s pressure and began oppose the anti-Nazi boycott of German goods, and promised to introduce measures against Egyptian Jews. The government press began to attack Jews as wreckers of the Egyptian economy. In secret meetings with the German embassy, the Egyptian government promised cooperation with the Nazis against Egyptian Jews. In return, the Reich opened a branch of the German News Agency in Cairo, and by 1938, German became the second largest importer of Egyptian goods.

The Egyptian public was impressed by the propaganda about Germany’s economic progress and Nazi mass marches. The pro-fascist Young Egypt movement was founded in 1933. They mimicked the Berlin rallies with paramilitary rallies in Cairo. Along with the Muslim Brotherhood, they came to dominate the street scene and became a third center of Egyptian politics, alongside parliament and the king.

The Cairo Nazi group adopted as a central strategic goal the creation of Jew-hatred in Egypt, in order to win popularity for Nazism, and to undermine the survival of Jews in the Middle East. In a report to the Third Reich’s Foreign Office, the Cairo Nazi group wrote that their campaigns “for the creation of an anti-Jewish mood among the Arab population” was meeting with small success, and that their new strategy would be to exploit the conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine, which must be “transplanted to Egypt.”

In April 1936, the Third Reich financed a series of anti-Jewish riots in Palestine and attacks on British targets, dubbed the Arab Revolt, working with their ally, the Mufti of Jerusalem. This murder of 400 Jews and thousands of Arabs met with complete success when the British government denied Jews their League of Nation’s mandated right of asylum in Palestine, in order to stop the riots and sabotage. When the Final Solution began to be implemented, Jews were trapped in Europe, as they no longer had their League of Nation’s ‘national home’ in Palestine. The violence against Jews in Palestine was also a pivotal success for the Third Reich in Egypt.

The Muslim Brotherhood received funds from the Third Reich via the German Legation in Cairo. This enabled them to set up a modern printing plant with 24 employees, and use the most current Nazi propaganda methods. In 1938, the mainstream Egyptian press still resisted participating in this anti-Jewish campaign, but slowly the Muslim Brotherhood, funded by the Third Reich and adopting Nazi techniques, profoundly increased anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in Egypt, and promoted their fusion of fascism and Islam."

"This is being presented as a new history. There is absolutely nothing new,about the North's involvement in this 'Peculiar Institution'!

I am shocked, surprised and thankful that Brown-Harvard Universities are seemingly stepping up to this politically correct bombshell!

Thanks to Russ Tate for sending me this info!"

Deo VindiceDan Boyette CoSNC Division========

Brown-Harvard Conference on Slavery and Capitalism, April 7-9, 2011

This conference is intended to explore the centrality of slavery to national economic development in the decades between the American Revolution and the Civil War. Presentations will explore New England investment in the plantation economies of the Caribbean; the technological and managerial innovations in plantation management that coincided with norths industrialization; and the origins of modern finance and credit in the buying and selling of enslaved men and women and the crops they produced. This new research suggests that the hotbeds of American entrepreneurship, speculation, and innovation might as readily be found in Mississippi or Virginia as in New York or Massachusetts. The issue is not whether slavery was or was not capitalist (an older debate), but rather the impossibility of understanding the nation's spectacular pattern of economic development without situating slavery front and center.

The conference begins on Thursday, April 7th, with a keynote address by President Ruth Simmons of Brown University. Paper presentations will follow on Friday the 8th at Brown University. The conference then moves to Harvard for additional papers on Saturday, April 9th.This event is free and open to the public.

"Anyone who thinks Egypt has just witnessed the triumph of democracy in the usual misuse of that term go back to losing your favorite computer game and do not even consider a career in politics.........The problem with Statism isn’t just that you run out of other people’s money, but not knowing what the average person wants: secure borders, safe streets, and the ability to succeed by our own efforts and keep 90% of what we produce. Sure, mobs can bring down current administrations, butcan they keep what they won? Unlikely, even with cheerful willingness to shed blood."========

Iraqi Archbishop: West Incapable of Fully Understanding the Threat of a “Reawakening of Islam” in Middle East

Remembrance

To die for one’s country is not only an act of bravery, it is THE act of bravery. For soldiers, it is just an extension of their military career, a part of their duty. As leaders have asked their soldiers to sacrifice themselves for the good of the society, it is only right for leaders to go through the same motion. They should practice what they have preached.

As war is seen as a noble act, tu sat serves as redemption in case of defeat. It is also a way to tell the enemy: “You might have won the battle/war but you don’t deserve to win because you don’t have the chinh nghia (just cause).” And it is not only just cause: it is the moral belief that the cause they are fighting for deserves their total sacrifice. Continues below

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Core Creek Militia

==============================My sixth great grandfather, his wife, and five of his six children were killed in battle with the Tuscarora Indians at Core Creek, NC.

The Seven Blackbirds

==============================My third great grandfather was an Ensign in the Revolutionary War, and saved his unit's flag after being wounded at the Battle of Brandywine. He was also at Kingston (Kinston), Wilmington, Charleston, Two Sisters and Augusta. He was at the defeat at Brier Creek and also Bee Creek.

Requiem Aeternam -
Eternal Rest Grant unto Them
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My second great grandfather was killed in action on May 3, 1863 at the Battle of Chancellorsville.
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My great grandfather and great uncle knew all the men in the "Civil War Requiem" video as they were part of the 53rd NC which was the sole unit defending Fort Mahone. (Fort Mahone was named "Fort Damnation" by the Yankees) *Handpicked men of the 53rd (My great grandfather was one of these) made the final, night assault at Petersburg in an attempt to break Grant's line. This was against Fort Stedman which was a few miles to the slight northeast. They initially succeeded, but reinforcements drove them back. This video is made from photographs which were taken the day after the 53rd evacuated the lines the night before to begin the retreat to Appomattox. I have many more pictures taken by the same photographer, one of these shows a 14 year old boy and the other is the famous picture of the blond, handsome soldier with his musket.
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*General Gordon promised the men a gold medal and 30 days leave if they accomplished their task and many years after the War my great grandfather wrote General Gordon, who was then governor of Georgia about this incident. They exchanged several letters which I have framed. See first link below.
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*The Attack On Fort Stedman
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"His Colored Friends"
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Lee's Surrender
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My Black NC Kinfolks
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Punished For Being Caught!

Great Grandfather Koonce

He was a drummer boy in the WBTS, survived the War only to die a few years later. He was caught in an ice storm on his way home, but instead of seeking shelter, continued on his horse until the end. His clothes had to be cut off and he died a few days later.